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I'm a Windows-oriented PC tech who knows zip about Linux. My daughter, who lives some 1000k from me, had a rush of blood to the head and bought an Asus Eee 4GB mini-laptop, which apparently has Linux installed, as well as some 40-odd applications.

My question: She needs an external DVDRW to play movies and record stuff. I'm familiar with Liteon equipment, so I thought I'd buy her one of their drives. Will this gadget work on the Asus? It apparently has 2 or 3 USB 2.0 ports.

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I'm not at all experienced with external optical drives, but I don't see why one wouldn't work on a Linux box. Is the drive plug-and-play? If not, you'll have to find some "alternate" drivers for it, but it should work either way.

Recently had to do some video editing for my boss which required me to borrow an external DVDRW - a LiteOn - to attach to the Dell Laptop I installed Fedora 11 on - picked it up without any trouble - didn't get very far with the task in hand as MoviePlayer required codecs (downloaded) but then said it needed DVD source - not as user friendly as Sabayon 4.1 (apart from the fact no sound - Dell's fault not Sabayon!) I believe the Asus ships with Xandros (who signed an interoperability deal with Microsoft - Boo! - and did a sly deal with Michael Robertson who sold of Linspire to them!) That aside, providing the ASUS Eeee has 2 usb ports close to one another i guess it should work.